I won't say they're all the same but as long as they conform to the DOCSIS standard or whatever you should be good to go. You should also check your cable companies website to see if there are any they DON'T support at the moment, I had an issue with my moms a few years back where it wasn't supported but the tech worked it all out anyways (because it did conform to the standard).

I'm having a period of poor (extremely bad, actually) connection speeds here on Charter in CT.

Tech support says NP on their lines. But as I said, I am in CT where it has been raining in biblical amounts. I suspect a line issue that will be cleared up soon, and I could deal with a few days, but my wife the WoW junkie is freaking out. In working with the Techie, he stated that he could not get a reading of my surfbooard's internals (it is about 6 years old, I originally rented it from Charter and now I own it) - which MIGHT indicate it is going bad. He reset it from his location and all was fine for awhile, then it got fooged again (about the time I went onto LIVE with the 360) and she went skitzo (well, not really skitzo but got all mopey). While we were BSing he said to get another surfboard or a LINKSYS. I was just wondering if anyone had any favorites. You all did me good with the wireless router advice a while back.

Soooo, anyways, I'm for waiting a day or two to see if things get better as they usually do in the rare times my connection sucks, but I don't want her to end up in a rehab or something...So I planning ahead for a modem purchase in case I have to do it just to stop the moodiness.

Let us know what you end up with and how it treats you, Swampy. I'm about to be temporarily moving into an apartment while awaiting the completion of our new mansion o' doom and discovered I'll likely have to be going cable as well.

Last night I did a "hard reset" and all was well. I turned EVERYTHING off overnight, and this moring powered up in order (Modem and router, then PC) and the problem was there again. A hard reset of the modem and when I left for work all was fine. If, when I call home before leaving the office, I get an wet hornet on the other end, I'll be going to COMP USA on the way home. I'm starting to think the modem might be failing.

Well a new modem will cost you about 50$ or so, like routers unless you have a brand afficianado go with the cheapest. Motorola still makes the surfboard brand but now all the router folks make the modems too.

Do you have any splices in the line from the box outside your house to the jack for the cable modem? I added one and when there was a cable outage a few months later for about a day my modem never got signal back, the cable co had done something to the strength signal during the outage and the splice was seeping too much DB from the modem to make a connection. A tech came out and spliced it at the box outside (with an approved Y filter) the house so all my TV signal splices were on one run and my modem was on a dedicated run to the jack.

What does the modem do? Does it have the lights blinking like it's not getting signal or does it show signal and still not work? You should also be able to go the management page of the modem to see the strength of the signal and all sorts of other stats.

No, the lights indicate normal activity, and it is staying connected, but the speeds get quartered from what they should be.

The Charter techie stated that he thought the modem was getting iffy because he could not get to it's readings from his end. My wife had the page up last night but I got involved with the techie and ended up using DSL reports which showed a big speed loss down and up. After he reset it from his end last night things were OK for a while.

Then they got worse again, the junkie flipped and after I got her off the computer I did a hard reset (unplug the cable and power, hold reset button down for 2 minutes) then things were OK, then (as above in todays 1st post) I turned everything off and this morning upon turning everything on speed sucked. Another hard reset fixed things and then I left for work......I'm afraid to call home....

Called home, the speeds dumped already. I told her to call and have them send someone to check the lines (which will take a while no doubt). Meanwhile, I'll be buying a new Cable Modem before going home to rule that component out.

The speed loss was noted without the router in the equation already, so I know that isn'tr a factor.

Wounder, I picked up a Linksys cable modem and it seems to have cured my ills.

After I had them register my MAC, I ended up buying a service upgrade to 5Mbs/512Kbs, and they adjusted the settings and the Linksys immediately reconfigured to the faster speeds. I played BF2 last night on 2 computers and we have no problems.